Brutal Test: Socket Salt Spray Testing 48-Hours 

How to determine a socket is qualified wear-resistant and rust-resistant?

The socket surface is through electroplating treatment, so the steel will not expose to air from getting rusty. It improves ability of wear-resistance and acid-resistance. That’s why electroplating is the necessary procedures for a “quality” socket. But, how to tell if the surface treatment is good enough?

As a professional socket maker, Tien-I test surface treatment in 2 ways:

1.) Plating, Coating Thickness Test

2.) Salt Spray Test

Plating/Coating Thickness Test have two popular methodologies. One is destructive method, Electrolytic Metallic Coating Tester; the other is non-destructive type, Fluorescent X-ray Thickness Analyzer.

These 2 models are operated in different ways, but for same purpose: measure the thickness with specific elements by the spots of the object’s electroplating surface. In other words, image you measure the thickness of the clothes on the model through either Chemical method or X-Ray.

The second is Salt Spray test, which you can find the specification for testing in both ANSI and ISO documentations. Here is the Wikipedia definition for reference:

"....Salt spray test is a test to assess the corrosion resistance of products or metallic materials by means of artificial comparison with salt and mist environmental conditions created by salt spray test equipment. The manual specific salt spray test environmental is conducted by using a certain volume space - salt spray test chamber, which is produced the salt spray environment by artificial method to assess the quality of salt spray corrosion resistance...."

"....The salt spray test consists of the following: 5% sodium chloride aqueous solution at 35°C , and then is sprayed in the test chamber. Comparing with the accelerated corrosion method under seawater environment, its resistance to corrosion is determined by the time. … It could be several times or dozens of times of the content more than the one of salt and mist contents in the natural environment, which speeds up the corrosion and shortens the testing lead time for the product in salt spray testing. For example, if we had the product tested in a natural exposure environment, we might get the outcome in; while a similar result can be obtained within 24 hours after the testing in an artificial comparison salt spray environment..."

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%B9%BD%E9%9C%A7%E8%A9%A6%E9%A9%97%E8%A8%AD%E5%82%99

Seeing is believing.

Below video is Tien-I electroplated socket in 48-hour salt spray testing. To save time, we short this video to 2 minutes via time-lapse. 

The following photo is after 48-hour salt spray testing.  The plating surface 98% is still in shiny matt-chrome finish. The standard to the hand-tool industry is 24 hours salt spray testing.

Tien-I specialize at making CR-V sockets and CR-MO impact sockets in Taichung since 2003.  Any socket problem, contact Tien-I experienced Team.